Moving Pictures

My classes are nothing if not honest. I say that in a good way, as it can be quite revealing as to what goes on in other people's classrooms.

I am lucky (!) enough to teach in most subject areas and think I have learnt well from other subjects and improved my teaching at least a little. I love using little snippets of video in my lessons, usually funny and memorable, and always related to the objective (even if sometimes the pupils have to think carefully to make the link).

Twice last week, with different classes from different year groups I got "We never do this elsewhere". This got me thinking, why don't other people use video?

I soon found out why. I needed to get a video file to work one morning, so at 8am duly did my testing. Windows Media Player hated it. OK, try Quicktime. Hated it. VLC? Nope. OK redownload... blocked. Update Quicktime? sticks at 99% due to lockdown. Convert it on zamzar.com? Page loads but upload doesn't due to internet filter.

Unless you are a level 20 net ninja at home, using video is actually very hard. Next time I hear the comment from a pupil, I will use my anecdote to apologise and explain.